How many lives are we actually saving

[Baaaahhhhh]

An interesting read from the BBC, and a question that I have been wondering about since the ONS released figures last week.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

Article talks about the effect of different scenarios on the number of excess deaths ie: over and above what would be expected, and versus other seasonal illnesses like normal flu.

A five year old was announce as the youngest victim in today’s death toll announcement.

How does that sit with all those on here who talk as though the dead were all bound to die anyway?

Well said @BelleSausage

@BelleSausage

While relatively rare, some children die from flu each year. Since 2004-2005, flu-related deaths in children reported to CDC during regular flu seasons have ranged from 37 to 187 deaths.

www.aappublications.org/news/2020/02/28/flu022820

Where’s the outrage?

People keep saying that thousands of people die each year of flu or other things anyway. That’s true, but those deaths don’t stop because of this virus. There might be some overlap, but these are hundreds of people every day dying as well as the other deaths. And then there’s the knock-on effect of other treatments being delayed too, so even more deaths.

If a hospital was running at 90% capacity before the virus, due to all the years of cuts, then it doesn’t need many cases to bring it to capacity. If we weren’t limiting the spread, then the huge number of cases all at once would mean even more unnecessary deaths just because those people couldn’t access hospital treatment.

And “underlying health conditions” doesn’t mean someone would have died next week anyway. Like most people, I have friends with asthma who manage fine normally and who have decades left to live, or diabetes, or who are having chemotherapy, or lots of easily manageable conditions, or elderly people with lots left in them. Their lives are valuable. The economy isn’t quite as messed up as it could be - lots of people are able to work from home, so while it’s scary and many are struggling, it’s not a disaster compared to thousands of people dying.

The economy is very messed-up. We’re in a deep recession(worse than 2008). If this continues, we will go into a global economic depression.

How nice to be able to work from home. Tell that to lower income families. Or to the self-employed. Or to the single mom with 3 children locked up in a small flat who just lost her job.

Hundreds of thousands of people will lose their life from this recession. Poverty, heart attacks from stress and anxiety, suicides and some people whose elective surgery was put on the back burner. Healthcare will be cut because of lack of funding. Many people will lose their homes, their livelihood and life savings.

500,000 extra lives lost from cancer because of the 2008 recession. THIS is a hundred times more severe.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/25/financial-crisis-caused-500000-extra-cancer-death-according-to-l/

The death rate if no treatment is available would be much higher though. My brother is a doctor in London working on a recovery ward for people with COVID who are post intubation. He said approx three out of every four patients they are intubating are recovering, but these patients would undoubtedly have died without intubation, including some very young previously fit and healthy people. The world as we knew it up to February 2020 is realistically never coming back and was going to change significantly anyway, even if we decided not to lock down.

The ‘lockdown’ will create as many tragedies as it’s designed to prevent but these are not for now, we’ll be confronted with them for years to come.

No lockdown will lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths, collapse of the nhs , it is the virus that is bringing us recession, not lockdown

You are assuming that the impending recession is caused by the lockdown measures, rather than the virus itself. People’s behaviours had already started to change before the lockdown. The stock market tanked before the lockdown. People were keeping children off school before the lockdown. If the lockdown was lifted tomorrow, how many people would return to normality? The recession was inevitable imo, but it is different to previous recessions. You can’t compare it to 2008 as there is no banking crisis behind it. Also unnecessary austerity was the cause of much suffering post 2008. This recession will need a different approach as austerity doesn’t work. I think that the fact that the majority of governments all over the world, all being advised by different advisors, have come to the same conclusion that a lockdown is the best way to overcome the crisis speaks volumes tbh.

A unconditional income would help massively at the moment. It’d be fairer than all the different rules for different job types at the moment.
That would keep the economy running and let people isolate who need to.

@midgebabe

It is unreliable data, flawed modeling, mass hysteria and panic that is causing this deep recession... not the virus.

@Limitedsimba123

Of course you compare it to 2008. All that will happen 10 folds.

So you don't think that something with a death rate of probably 1% if you can treat people and significantly greater if you don't won't cause problems if left unchecked?

Collapse of the nhs because too many staff die and people can't get treatment for anything, people dying in agony because there is no treatment for anything, bodies in the streets or left to rot where peop le die

So many people ill or grieving that it is much harder to keep supply chains working than it is now

Collective grief and shame that people let this happen, mental health survivors guilt.....yeah great plan

I didn’t say the lockdown should never have happened. However, 3-4 weeks is enough. The hospitals have enough beds and are up to speed. This is to slow the virus, not stop it. The virus will never stop.

But looking at Sweden, maybe this could have been done with some restrictions and not a lockdown.

After just a “few days” of lockdown, Neil Ferguson said the NHS will not be breached and the deaths will be substantially lower than 20,000. Interesting. So maybe some social distancing was enough.

And honestly, one government wants to do what the other did. They don’t want to look irresponsible. Blindly taking measures.

You can say this possibly could be peer-pressure to the extreme. Only time will tell.

What data and modelling are you using to come to your conclusions, considering govs the world over across all political spectrums have come to a different conclusion to you? 2008 was a banking crisis,, we don’t have a banking crisis at the moment and the gov have implemented lots of measures to try and prevent credit defaults. Comparisons to 2008 are only necessary if we approach the recovery in the same way.

mumlove

I honestly don't think you understand the data. But I think you're right about the devastating effects of lockdown. And wrong about how things would somehow be better without it.

Can you understand that a short lockdown will only leave us in exactly the same place in a very short space of time? In the time frame you're suggesting, the last peak of seriously ill patients will not have died or recovered before the next wave begins- and that includes NHS staff who got ill in the first wave, not to mention their fatigued colleagues operating in war-time conditions. You're very good at looking down the line for the lockdown scenario. What would you like the NHS to actually do when that happens?

@Limitedsimba123

The 2008 recession was not just a banking crisis. Good Lord.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/03/recession-depression-data-coronavirus

@0v9c99f9g9d939d9f9g9h8h

What would happen to the NHS during and after a depression? Shall we begin picking money off of trees?

Shall we begin picking money off of trees?

I’m not a Tory but have always had a grudging respect for Theresa May and her work ethic but honestly fuck her for giving people this sound bite.

After just a “few days” of lockdown, Neil Ferguson said the NHS will not be breached and the deaths will be substantially lower than 20,000.

Well a few days have passed and we’re not there yet as he was on R4 this morning urging people to not go out and socialise in warm weather and to note the severity of what we are facing.

Yes it was caused by a banking crisis. Still awaiting for your superior data and modelling.

“Now, anywhere you look in the global economy we are seeing a hit to domestic demand on top of those supply chain impacts,” said Innes McFee, managing director of macro and investor services at Oxford Economics in London. “It’s incredibly worrying.”

www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/business/economy/coronavirus-recession.html

Austerity measures following the 2008 'banking crisis' directly led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and still is.

What we will face after CV and the lockdown will be far worse than that and go on far longer.

@Limitedsimba123

Umm, wording? You said 2008 was “only” a banking crisis... it affected many. Consumerism, mortgages, businesses, etc